Self-pleasuring is such an important aspect of your sexual expression and exploration. Beyond the pleasure that it brings you, which is like nobody else can, it offers some amazing opportunities for healing, growth and learning.

The workshop that I developed on this topic is called CONSCIOUS SELF-PLEASURING. And in this is a major key to access these opportunities.

Masturbation

The first key is Self-Pleasure. For many people Masturbation has become a loaded and negative word, often associated with guilt from frantic teenage ‘quickies’. Self-pleasuring is different.

As with pleasuring a partner, it’s an act of love, of fun, exploration, enjoyment and excitement. It’s about pleasure.

Conscious Pleasure

Conscious Pleasure is the second key. When we bring this dimension into pleasuring it allows us to go beyond any guilt, embarrassment or shame we may feel. More than that it allows us to take our pleasure into a few different places.

The first of these is that we can use our sexual energy for such things as meditation, healing and creativity. The second is that we can consciously begin to explore our own bodies, our own sexuality.We can go on an incredible journey into finding out what we enjoy, how we like to be touched, where we like to be caressed. It gives us permission to explore parts of our body we may consider taboo, dirty or otherwise forbidden.

This is the power of Consciousness in Self-Pleasuring. And it often comes from way back in time. Every child touches their genitals extensively, it feels good, and it’s warm and comforting. And invariably our parents, and those of us who are parents say, ‘Don’t do that’. If that’s all our parents said it would probably be ok, we’d do it anyway.

The Taboo

But then they tell us it’s dirty, nasty, horrible, you’ll go blind, it’ll fall off, good boys/girls don’t do that. And we start to become separated from our genitals. They become disconnected from the rest of us.

Add the rest of the generally negative sexual conditioning we receive, the pleasure-negative education, and we’re even further away from being healthily integrated sexual beings.

The words that we use for our genitals also play a part in this. Besides all the sex words and ‘other’ names our genitals are given, we use terms such as ‘private place’ and ‘down there’. No other part of our body is treated in this way. My nose is always my nose, I might think it looks funny, but it’s always my nose. My genitals are not.

Sexual Fulfilment

Conscious Self-Pleasuring gives us the opportunity to change and heal many of these past limitations to pleasure and sexual fulfilment. Consciously we can reclaim ownership of our bodies and our pleasure. We can come to see the beauty of our yoni/lingam, (the Tantric terms for vagina and penis).

We can give ourselves permission to enjoy sex to the full, to explore, to play, to be excited and feel good about ourselves as sexual beings. This is not just stimulating ourselves to an orgasm for the release or the few moments of pleasure. It’s a whole other world, the experience of CONSCIOUS SELF-PLEASURING.